On (and On) with the Dance

Arthur Murray taught me dancing in

a hurry.

I had a week to spare. He showed me the groundwork, the

walk around work, And told me to take it from there.

--From a Johnny Mercer song

When Arthur Murray dance studios began springing up all over the U.S. 20 years ago, the big sales pitch was learning to dance in a hurry at a small cost. But no longer. Now that the Murray studios have expanded to 450 on four continents doing $55 million of business last year, dancing takes more time--and more money.

After students learn a few basic dances, they are urged to go on (and on) and take 300 to 500 hours of instruction to qualify for a bronze medal, even more for silver and gold awards. Since such proficiency cannot be obtained overnight, Arthur Murray has developed the lifetime membership, good for 1,000 hours of lessons, plus two hours monthly free for life. Originally priced around $7,000, life memberships have risen with inflation to $10,000, even higher in some cities. Some 4,100 have bought lifetime memberships. Many have bought up to four, for themselves or to donate to charitable institutions, spend almost all their free time taking Arthur Murray lessons, attending Arthur Murray Saturday-night parties, and even going on "dancers' holidays" to Bermuda, Havana and Puerto Rico.

Out of Step. Last week the Arthur Murray empire was busily checking the steps in its sales techniques in the wake of a Denver lawsuit involving a grieving widow whose friends advised her to get out and take Arthur Murray lessons and find some companionship. In four whirlwind months in 1953, Mrs. Myrtle K. White paid $20,640 for lifetime memberships. When Mrs. White came to, her savings gone and dependent on her job in a bakery, she sued Budd Howard, operator of the Denver studio. The court ordered him to give back $15,890, the value of her unused lessons--but only because of a technicality. The contract she had signed was with Arthur Murray, Inc., a New York enterprise, the Manhattan mother studio of Arthur Murray and Kathryn, his wife. Although Murray picks all the local studio managers, who operate under a franchise, and takes 10% of their gross receipts, each studio is a separate entity for legal liability purposes.

In another suit last week, Mrs. Gladys C. Foss of St. Louis, also a widow, charged that she went into the Arthur Murray studio there, intending to take only a few lessons, paid $5 down and soon was persuaded to pay $17,040 for lifetime memberships. But she balked at selling her house to buy more lessons, instead sued for $100,000, charging fraud.

Out of Form. In their multimirrored rococo main studio in Manhattan, Arthur Murray, 63, and Kathryn Murray, 52, last week exhibited a new application form for membership in the International Arthur Murray Lifetime Club. Keyed to worldwide expansion of studios, the application is designed to reduce the risk of suits. It asks students if they "enjoy exchange lessons," i.e., dancing with other than their regular instructors, thus proposes to discourage pupil-teacher crushes. Twice the form insists that membership must be within the pupil's means. Actually there have been a number of unpublicized incidents in which unhappy life-timers got their money back without going to court: one involved a wealthy West Coast widow, a triple lifetimer, who tried to date her instructor after hours in nightclubs. "Naturally," said Murray, "we refused permission."

Murray lifers like to keep on, say the Murrays, for the fun and companionship, and because there are always new dances to master. The Murrays are ever on the lookout, will go a long way to study a new dance. Their current specialty, researched in the Caribbean: the stiff-legged merengue, an old folk dance that some say got a new lease on life after Dominican Dictator Rafael Trujillo was injured in a car accident, could not limber up to the beguine or bolero.

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